Motorcycle Camping

just back from 6 weeks camping out and travelling along the french / Italian and swiss Trans euro trail

Nearly every lunch box I had stuff packed in got smashed xD

also dented all of my aluminium water bottles and lost my starter button (straight away replaced by rebelmoto which was great) and also fried my front brake as moisture got into the master cylinder and dot4.

Overall did 5897.7km in the end from getting off the Ferry in France to getting off the bike back in the apartment. Trying to upload some pictures at the moment

I keep meaning to write up something on it, but I can't remeber how i was uploading pictures before on here xD

What I mostly found was anything that could break was going to break. So get a good strong topbox to keep valuables / electronics in and then anything that can survive an impact goes into the panniers.

Every lunchbox I took with me to store parts into got smashed.

I had alot of spare parts with me for things that could go wrong on a DR, and thankfully never had to use them, same with my puncture repair kit, but in saying that I'd rather have them with me, than if i broke down on the side of the road.

I was a little excesive on cooking gear. I think next time I just bring the basics and just go from there, better off using boil in a bag and pot noodles / pasta rice / dishes when travelling as you ideally want to just be boiling water on your cooking gear to save the hassle of cleaning grease and sauce off your stuff, especially if your not near a tap or flowing water.

Europe is full of low cost camping spots, with the most expensive being in italy at 17 euro, so that saves hassle of where to camp if you didn't want to wild camp and also gives options of nearby restarants and shops.

So alot of the pictures are up around Col de Tende and then a track that goes around the top there and through italy that myself and my Dad did.

It was quite hard to stop in some places to get pictures as it just wasn't suitable to stop the bike. I do have alot more pictures, but I just havn't uploaded them to my google drive to put onto Imgur, but i might look at if theres a mobile app.

Dad didn't continue on with me after France, but in Italy i bumped into a french lad also doing the TET, so we teamed up for a bit going along the italian stretch, before he went off back to france.

Once i got to the last stretch of the italian TET before hitting Switzerland there was a section marked not suitable for heavy bikes, which I should have paid more attention too, so the DR650 unloaded is about 160 - 170kg, but on a full 25litre fuel tank and all the luggage, it adds up quickly in weight.

So there was one path there that took me about 3 hours or so to get a few kilometers due to how bad the loose rocks, gravel and dirt was.

and I also found out from a local, your meant to go downhill on it, not up hill and they use it for Mountain bike competitions because its so bad. He thought I was insane taking a motorcycle up hill on it. The second last picture is actually just before I went at it, as I took a walk up first to see what kind of mistake I was about to make.

was a really fun trip.

I would say anyone with a road bike should definitely do switzerland, from Switzerland it took me 2 days on the DR650se to get to Cherbourg, so on a decent road bike I imagine at a push you'd do that in one day, I also avoided toll roads as i figured I would spend as long fighting to get my wallet out and also the difference in fuel / toll would have been negligble. Its about 1000km altogether.

Yeah switzerland is super strict on their laws,

Thankfully between the DR650 not being enjoyable at high speed and my satnav constantly giving me updates about current speed limits I avoided a similar situation in the week and a half I was there for.

They also have a upper noise limit on exhaust pipes as well there which is something to be aware of, so if you have an aftermarket exhasuaust you can be fined if its too loud. Some amount of sportsbikes though out there! I think during the summer everyone goes **** nuts and treats it as a speed way!

To be honest, I caused more problems for other drivers by just criusing along slowly to enjoy the views. I definitely counted two times I caused drivers in Italy to be fined by illiegal overtaking (the Italian police didn't give a **** that I pulled towards the side to allow for it which surprised me, if its a solid line, then its a definite no) I was doing 40km/h in a 60km/h zone because the view was amazing

And again in another part where I was doing 60 km/h in an 80 km/h zone and a driver shot out past me doing about 100km/h straight into a checkpoint around the corner, I came around just in time to see them waving the driver into the side of the road. But I didn't see that particular driver coming up behind me as it was twisties

Same! heading into the garage again today to try and get this exhaust pipe out of the cylinder head.

Once the engine is out then it should hopefully be smooth sailing from there, just a matter of stripping everything down and sorting it out into baggies and boxes for whats what. Emailed Ikon shocks just there about getting the Koni dialarides refurbished.

I'm heading to Germany next summer, so I'm hoping to take that with me. Otherwise I'll take the BMW F650gs

couple of nights wild camping, with zero hassle. Biggest issue was more when up the alps, because its 2000m altitude, middle of the night the clouds will come a bit further down and you wake up with everything soaked.

My Lidl brand sleeping bag sucked as well, so next time im getting a better brand sleeping bag.

what mattress did you use? I had the decathalon one, but I've been told the sea to summit is a serious upgrade over it.

Gas was something I was worried about too, I took a MSR multifuel stove that took Petrol, so it also meant when I was stuck I can either pull fuel from the tank, or dump fuel into the tank depending on what was the issue